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Archaeologists measured the magnetic fields found in clay bricks to determine the construction date of Babylon's Ishtar Gate.Babylon's bright-blue Ishtar Gate was thought to have been built to celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem — but a new analysis finds that it may have been erected years later.The iconic glazed-brick edifice, which King Nebuchadnezzar II ordered to be built and decorated with wild bulls and mušhuššu-dragons while ruling the Babylonian empire from 605 to 562 B.C., was constructed in three phases and served as the entrance to the ancient city of Babylon, located in southern Mesopotamia. However, the exact dates of...

The ancient city of Aizanoi was founded as a Phrygian city on the western end of the Phrygia kingdom, in the present-day Çavdarhisar district of the western Anatolian province of Kütahya in Turkey. Aizanoi was home to the Aizanitisians, Phrygians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines and the site was rediscovered by European travelers in 1824. The German Archaeological Institute began excavating in 1926 and works resumed in 1970, with them having accelerated significantly over the last two years. At this site, that’s listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List , over the years archaeologists have unearthed ancient stone heads and...

A Syriac scholar at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, Dr. Kessel was sitting in the library of the manuscript's owner, a wealthy collector of rare scientific material in Baltimore. At that moment, Dr. Kessel realized that just three weeks earlier, in a library at Harvard University, he had seen a single orphaned page that was too similar to these pages to be coincidence. The manuscript he held contained a hidden translation of an ancient, influential medical text by Galen of Pergamon, a Greco-Roman physician and philosopher who died in 200 A.D. It was missing pages and Dr. Kessel was suddenly...

At the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. through March 16Did you miss it? 2013 was the Year of Italian Culture (YOIC), brought to us by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The themes of the event were, according to the brochure, “Research, Discovery, and Innovation”—which is somewhat odd, considering that the most noticeable manifestation of the YOIC was the temporary importation of various masterpieces of Italian art that are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Perhaps the idea was for the YOIC to give evidence of past innovation. In any event, those of us on the receiving end...

In storybook histories, the ancient city of Gordion is remembered only as the seat of King Midas, he of the golden touch, and the place where Alexander the Great struck a famous blow in legend and metaphor. Challenged to separate the strands of an impossible knot, the Gordion knot, the conqueror cut through the problem, in the manner of conquerors, with one authoritative swing of his sword. After Midas and Alexander, Gordion languished on the fringes of history, and until recently archaeologists had taken little notice of its Celtic past. Yes, European Celts — the Gauls of Roman times and ...

During the 230s B.C., Attalos I of Pergamon in Asia Minor decisively defeated marauding tribes of Gauls. Known for their muscular physique and the feral appearance imparted by the thick, manelike locks of hair they washed with water and lime, these Celtic warriors were at various times a terror to Greeks and Romans alike. In 387 B.C. they had plundered Rome itself. "The Dying Gaul," on loan to the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, from Rome's Capitoline Museum through March 16, is a superb antique copy of a sculptural masterpiece originally intended to commemorate the Pergamene triumph. Attalos I...

This is old news with a new interpretation. Obama’s stage at the 2008 Democratic convention was designed in the style of the Pergamon Altar, a Greek Temple, which is mentioned in the book of Revelation as the “seat of Satan” or the “throne of Satan,” depending on the translation. The biblical reference is not just to the altar, but to Pergamos as a center of the all powerful Roman state as well as a regional center of pagan worship and persecution of the early Christians. The pagan religion was the state cult and a man could become a god in...

Although the majority of its superb intact monuments now sit in Berlin's Pergamon Museum, enough remains of the acropolis for the visitor to sense the former greatness of the city that once rivaled Alexandria, Ephesus and Antioch in culture and commerce, and whose scientific advancements in the field of medicine resonate through the corridors of today's medical treatment facilities. Juxtaposed sharply against this image of enlightened learning is that of "Satan's Throne," as described by the prophet John of Patmos (Revelation 2:12-13), which some scholars interpret as referring to the Great Altar of Pergamon, one of the most magnificent surviving...